


All in a Day's Work

by ltgmars



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Assassins & Hitmen, Drama, M/M, Minor Character Death, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-30
Updated: 2009-07-13
Packaged: 2017-10-26 00:24:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ltgmars/pseuds/ltgmars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ohno's impersonal relationship with a man who works in the same building suddenly became personal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue + Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the [](http://ohmiya.livejournal.com/profile)[**ohmiya**](http://ohmiya.livejournal.com/) [fanfiction contest](http://ohmiya.livejournal.com/118504.html). Prompt: AU: same mission, same order: "kill him" ([](http://yay-box.livejournal.com/profile)[ **yay_box**](http://yay-box.livejournal.com/)). My very first multi-chapter fic ever!

**Prologue**

Ohno ducked his nose into his shoulder to wipe away the sweat running down his face. It was hot in his apartment, even with the sun almost completely hidden by the horizon and the first signs of evening subtly peeking in his direction. Looking out the window, he squinted, gripping the paintbrush in his hand a little more tightly. His attention returned to his masterpiece in progress, and he stood, frozen for a moment, before he went back to work.

It was almost reckless the way he threw paint onto the canvas. It looked as if he didn't care where anything went, as long as it was there. Indeed, they all needed to be there somewhere -- a line for his family, a patch for his coworkers, a streak for his favorite restaurant. A messy dot in the center.

He painted and painted, deep into the night. The sun had long since settled into bed for the night, and the music of the quiet nighttime critters sifted into the room, but he continued to paint until his body and mind screamed for relief. And finally, when he couldn't even lift his hand above his waist, he took a haggard step back to look at what he supposed was the final product -- he'd said all he could physically say, so he had no choice but to let it go.

It was as if, over the course of the day, the painting had taken hold of Ohno's energy and pulled it steadily from his body. Swirls of yellow and red threaded together, spikes shot up from the canvas, movement simmered not too far beneath the surface; where Ohno could barely find the strength to keep his eyes open, the painting burned with life.

Ohno sat down with a thump and looked at the other paintings surrounding him, deep blues and greens telling tales of the sea and of murky, unending darkness. Amidst it all, the new painting shone brightly, almost blinding in its contrast to the others.

He looked away, his mind slowing as his eyes traced calm and simple doodles across the wall. When his mind had come to a complete stop and threatened to move backwards, he sighed and looked at his latest work once more. He examined it critically, starting around the edges and working his way inward, finishing with a long glance at the dot in the middle.

This new one, he mused with his eyes trained on the dot, was a little different from the rest of them.

  
 **Chapter One**

It had been five months since they started meeting in the bathroom during lunch.

The other man had a simple haircut (if a little fluffy around the edges), short eyebrows, a round nose, and a mole on his chin. He wasn't particularly handsome, and there was no real reason that Ohno should have been drawn to him. At first glance, he was virtually indistinct from any other stiff-collared Japanese man who worked in their building. In fact, Ohno doubted that he would have noticed the other man at all had it not been for his eyes. Those eyes... those eyes were dangerous. They could say nothing and everything all at once, which was more than Ohno could handle.

Five months ago, Ohno had his first encounter with those eyes. The other man -- the fluffy-haired, indistinct Japanese man -- was leaning over the sink, water dripping from his face as he peered blankly at his reflection. Ohno was quietly washing his hands in the neighboring sink, and as he squeaked the faucet off and groped in his back pocket for his handkerchief, his gaze rose to meet those eyes, _those eyes_ , in the mirror.

The overhead light flickered dully and bounced off the cool tile on the floor. One drop of water, and then another, fell from the other man's face as the two continued to stare at each other through the mirror. Ohno pulled his plain blue handkerchief from his pocket and slowly wiped his hands, rubbing the cloth between each of his long fingers and around his wrists. Without breaking eye contact, he made to toss the handkerchief at the other man, but the other man's short fingers had left the sink to grab the handkerchief before it was out of Ohno's hands. In the mirror, the other man smiled pleasantly, but his eyes said something else.

Ten minutes later, Ohno absently wondered what the other man's eyes were saying right at that moment, as their hands fumbled in the heat between them and their breaths against each other's mouths grew faster and more desperate. Ohno had little time to wonder, though, before his eyes slid shut and his head fell back against the stall door, gasping in a final breath while the other man shuddered against him. He felt a hand leave the tangled mess between them and come back with a wad of toilet paper, making cursory swipes at fingers and skin that were still hot to the touch. Ohno opened his eyes and closed them again, swallowing between deep breaths. By the time he was ready to look at the other man, their hands were more or less clean, and the other man's eyes, whatever they might have been saying a minute ago, said nothing at all. The lock opened with a click before they stepped out of the stall, and for the second time that day, Ohno found himself washing his hands next to the other man, though this time he could taste awkward self-consciousness in his mouth.

He turned toward the other man once he'd finished with his handkerchief. Ohno couldn't bring himself to look him in the eyes, so he settled on watching his hands as they took Ohno's handkerchief and quickly rubbed at damp skin. The hands stopped suddenly and remained still; Ohno slowly looked up at the other man's face. Seemingly satisfied, the other man smiled the same pleasant smile from before and finished drying his hands.

The overhead light flickered again before dimming a shade darker.

The other man stepped forward, body flush against Ohno's, their noses not an inch apart, and pushed the handkerchief into Ohno's back pocket before stepping back. His smile had turned into a smirk, and for the first time since their fateful meeting just minutes ago, his eyes spoke words that Ohno could understand, crystal clear. They said, _See you tomorrow._ And he did.

  
At the office, Ohno was a creature of habit, and it seemed that the other man subscribed to the idea of a "daily rut" as much as Ohno did. In fact, once he had taken notice of the other man, it wasn't difficult to pinpoint his daily routine, at least as far as Ohno himself was concerned. The other man came into the building every morning at 8:45 on the dot and walked past the workspace of Ohno's department to take the elevator up. He disappeared into his job for several hours before resurfacing just as Ohno was finishing up his lunch at his desk. At exactly 12:15 the other man would walk silently past, dropping a pastel yellow handkerchief on top of Ohno's bento, and go to the cafeteria to eat the daily special. At 12:30, he would arrive at the men's bathroom in the far corridor to, well, _get his handkerchief back_. He would always make it back to his desk -- somewhere on the second floor, Ohno assumed -- just in time for whatever 12:45 business he had.

One day, the other man had appeared in the bathroom five minutes early. He had knocked on the stall door three times before opening it to find Ohno there, leaning against the dividing wall and pumping his erection slowly. Ohno hadn't been nearly as embarrassed as he should have been, probably because of the way the other man had slipped silently into the stall and knelt down in front of him. After that, there hadn't been room for much of anything in his consciousness besides the slick heat of the other man's mouth and the softness of the other man's hair between his fingers.

At that point, beyond the contours of his body explored during the 15 minutes they spent together -- 20 on good days -- and the general layout of his morning routine, Ohno didn't know much about the other man. He didn't feel the need to.

  
It wasn't until one day, when Ohno was sucking on the other man's neck in just the right place and the other man moaned aloud for the first time that he realized it -- in five months, they hadn't spoken a word to each other. Ohno whispered, his lips dancing across the other man's throat, "You have a nice voice." The other man groaned and pushed down harder on Ohno's fingers inside him.

Afterwards, as they were drying their hands (the other man had teased Ohno's handkerchief out of his back pocket, so Ohno was running the other man's handkerchief between his fingers), Ohno spoke again. "So tell me your name."

The other man chuckled and took his handkerchief from Ohno's hands, folding it unevenly before stuffing it unceremoniously in his pocket. He looked up at the overhead light, which buzzed with renewed life. "I'm just your regular, no-name paper pusher." He grinned and gave Ohno a look. Ohno didn't know what it meant. "But if you must call me something, call me Nino."

Ohno smiled and nodded his head slightly in greeting. "Ohno. Nice to meet you."

  
The envelope that was waiting for Ohno that night at his apartment was extraordinarily regular. He got one every couple of weeks, and after he memorized the information inside, he filed it away in a drawer full of extraordinarily regular envelopes. The older ones farther back were crinkled and browning at the edges, but for the most part his sea of beige was the only hint of organization and uniformity in his apartment. All around him, piles of ramen bowls and disposable chopsticks broken at odd angles littered the floor. Clothes, ranging in cleanliness from "fresh from the wash" to "highly questionable", were scattered like children in a game of hide-and-seek. The truth of the matter was that Ohno often lost himself in his own mind, off exploring the somewheres and everywheres and nowheres of anywhere but where he was. It was enough to forget mundane real-world tasks like tidying up. But unlike mundane real-world tasks, taking care of his extraordinarily regular envelopes mattered a great deal, so at least with those he was deliberate in his precision.

Kicking away a pair of dirty boxers, Ohno settled cross-legged on the floor next to his envelope drawer and placed his newest acquisition in his lap. Gingerly peeling the envelope open, he mumbled happily to himself. "Let's see, what's happening this time?"

He liked this job, and he liked the freedom of it. Everything else in his life was settled and comfortably familiar, and while he didn't mind spinning through an endless minuet of the same few steps, he did relish the opportunity to choreograph his own steps every once in a while. Here, there were no rules to follow, no limits to what he could do and how he could do it. Knife, rope, lead pipe... he'd cleared the Clue board ages ago, and he was still finding new ways to win. That space for creativity in his otherwise humdrum life was the only thing -- outside his mind -- that he had to look forward to.

Up until five months ago, at least. That was when he met the fluffy-haired man who spoke with his eyes, in whose company he'd had some of his most creative moments. And while the circumstances of their meetings were nothing if not routine, their shared experiences during those times could claim no such regularity. Each breath and heartbeat was different, each glide and caress a new story to be told.

And just that day, a voice, crisp and clear and tasting like the smirk that sometimes tugged at the other man's lips. It even came with a name attached. "Nino, huh?" Ohno smiled to himself as he pulled the document about his latest target from the envelope. His smile disappeared instantaneously.

He stared silently at the picture, paperclipped to a two-page fact sheet printed on unassuming white paper. The picture stared back. It was certainly a familiar face -- after all, Ohno had spent a significant amount of time getting to know it (not just by sight, but with all five senses). But unlike the face, the eyes in the picture weren't quite right. Those eyes, Ohno realized, said a lot more in person than they did on paper.

Ohno's hand brushed across the document, his fingers skirting over his target's name. Ninomiya Kazunari.

"Nino. Huh."


	2. Prologue + Chapter One

**Chapter Two**

The worst day of Ohno's life was warm and sunny, birds singing carefree songs and the faint smell of sakura blossoms dyeing the air an almost-visible pink. Ohno slumped against the kitchen cabinet as the last of the telephone message echoed through the empty house. "Satoshi, it's your father. Come to the hospital. Your mother is dead."

It was six years ago, and Ohno was fresh out of college. He commuted from home to a pristine office building right in the heart of Marunouchi in downtown Tokyo. He had only been working there for four days before he called into the office to ask for a week off, speaking in a hollow, soulless voice that sounded nothing like his own.

Dozens of relatives and friends and coworkers filed into the Ohno household for the funeral several days later. People Ohno had never seen before spoke kindly of his mother and recounted tales of her kindness and generosity. Even Ohno's brand new section and department heads had come to pay their respects. Ohno's father and sister bowed deeply in gratitude to everyone who came by, but Ohno shifted uncomfortably where he kneeled at the front of the room, dissatisfied. The most amazing woman in the world had died. Why were there only dozens, a hundred at the most? Six billion people should have been queued in front of the door, waiting to come in and say something about the woman who made the sun rise and set just by being there.

One of the last people to come in was a tall man in a dark blue blazer. He bowed deeply to Ohno's father and sister in turn before facing Ohno, bowing again and sliding a plain, unmarked envelope across the floor. He met Ohno's questioning eyes and said simply, nodding at the envelope, "Please read it later." He left without another word.

That night, he and his sister shared a bed, laying together like children. In hushed voices, they traded their favorite stories about their mother, throwing them back and forth in the darkness; fond memories wrapped around them and lulled them to sleep. In the dim morning hours following, Ohno awoke from the most peaceful slumber he'd had in days and remembered the envelope from earlier. He peeled himself from his sister's loose embrace and picked up the envelope, which he had left along with his reading glasses on the nightstand next to him. He walked quietly into the bathroom and closed the door, turning on the lights and folding the toilet lid down. As he sat, he realized with a grimace that the lid wasn't heated the same way the toilet seat was, but his attention soon returned to the envelope in his hands.

Inside was a folded piece of light green stationery. He slipped on his glasses, unfolded the paper, and stilled, recognizing right away his mother's delicate handwriting and the ink of her favorite pen where it sank into the paper. Swallowing, he concentrated on the words in front of him.

 _Satoshi, if you're reading this, then I'm already dead. I'm sorry I left so soon. You were probably surprised, huh? But I want you to know something. Take a deep breath. It might be more surprising._

Ohno sucked in a shaky breath, but it fluttered out of him just as quickly. He tried once more, this time more steadily. Letting it out slowly, he continued reading.

 _Satoshi, I've killed 37 people in my life. To this day I remember each name and each face, and how each person died. I remember where the sun was each time, and I remember what I was wearing when each person took his last breath. It was never easy, but it was what I did._

 _Somewhere along the way, I met your father, and we fell in love. I stopped what I was doing long before your sister and you were born, and we were able to live peacefully for a very long time._

 _A hopeful, naive part of me thought that I had been able to escape my former life. But unfortunately when a person gets caught in a web like that, it's almost impossible to get out. In all likelihood, I was murdered for one of the 37 irreconcilable sins I committed in the past._

 _Forgive me for keeping it from you for so long. It isn't something I'm proud of, and the last thing I wanted to do was to tell you about a past that is nothing like the present. You're kind and gentle, Satoshi, unlike the monster that I used to be. And you're strong, so you can conquer my past in my stead. With that strength and this knowledge, please let the past be the past, and continue on being the sweet boy that you are._

 _Take care of your sister and your father for me, and take care of yourself._

 _All my love._

Ohno rubbed at the tears in his eyes with the back of his hand, sniffling as he folded the letter and slipped it back into the envelope. He stared at it, and as he sat there on the toilet, motionless, his heart swelled with affection and sorrow and nameless other emotions that he didn't know what to do with.

After a long time, he stood. He placed the envelope in the cabinet above the toilet, giving it one last glance before turning to face the bathroom door.

He looked at his hands, his long fingers and smooth nails nearly perfect copies of his mother's. Turning the door handle, he whispered, "I love you, Mom. And... I'm sorry." He turned off the lights and walked away.

  
A week later, Ohno had moved out of the house and into a ramshackle apartment miles away.

His mother was always so proud of him -- gentle Satoshi who cared for stray animals when they followed him home, kind Satoshi who gave his precious lunch to other students without realizing that he'd be left hungry; she would have been so disappointed in him if she knew what he was doing. So he began living on his own -- he wanted to be away from the presence of his loving family and the memories of his beautiful mother when he betrayed her.

  
His first target was a sitting duck, or at least looked a lot like one in Ohno's estimation.

He was a broad-shouldered man in his late 30s who seemed to have kept himself in good shape. He would probably have been a harder target if it weren't for his nasty habit of sitting silently in the same church every Saturday, head bent down against clasped hands as if he had something unforgivable to atone for. As it was, he was an easy kill.

Three months of training had been all Ohno needed to go from a nervous kid with nothing at all to a doubtless predator with two invaluable allies -- the element of surprise and his own calm senses. He slipped into the back of the church, and the bent figure of a man on the last day of his life came into view. He smiled coldly. Somewhere in the darkest corners of his mind, the predator wanted to have fun on his first hunt.

He disengaged the silencer from his gun and stepped squarely into the aisle, shooting to hit the pew just inches from his target. By the time the wood splintered away, the man had crouched down behind the back of the seat and pulled out his own gun, cocked and ready and aimed straight at Ohno. Ohno lifted an eyebrow.

Ah, so that's what it was. He was an assassin, too.

Ohno dropped to his knees and rolled forward just in time to feel a bullet fly past his head, and he took a wild shot that cracked sharply against wood. The next several minutes played similarly, sounding of gunshots and huffed breaths. The noises floated to the ceiling and bounced off the high stained-glass windows, filling the space like a hellish bell choir.

A well-placed shot had the man's gun flying from his hand, and Ohno dashed forward to catch him on his way to retrieve it. Once he was within arm's reach, he tripped the man and slammed him to the ground, kicking him until he was on his back and planting one foot firmly on his chest. He smiled, levelling the gun at his target's forehead. The man's eyes drifted from realization to resignation, to a terrified moment of recognition. Ohno froze in response, a cold sweat taking over his body.

This was it -- this is what he'd come here for. But at that precise moment, all of his training flew out the window like his novice misfires from months past. His memory failed him as he tried to remember some way, any way, to calm his nerves. But all he could do was hold the gun between his trembling hands.

Paralyzed, he stared wide-eyed at the man beneath him. The man took that opportunity to make one last desperate, pleading gesture. Ohno, trance broken and suddenly resolute, pressed his foot down harder on the man's chest. Wanting to see no more, he closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. A grunt, and then silence. Taking several deep breaths, he let his hands drop to his sides.

Ohno wanted to say that it was an emotionless kill, that his training had really made him into the heartless machine that he was supposed to be. But saying that would be a lie. The truth was in his blood as it ran red hot in his veins and in the adrenaline that didn't release him until hours after he stumbled numbly into the back alley behind the church. If there was any kill that was emotional, any gunshot that meant something to him, it was this one.

The bastard had killed his mother, after all.

  
Twenty-eight-year-old Ohno Satoshi stood from where he had been sitting on his apartment floor, next to his envelope drawer. He sighed heavily as he loosened his tie and unbuttoned his shirt, pausing to smile at the picture of his family on the nightstand before continuing to get ready for bed.

But the last thing in his mind before he was taken by dreamless sleep wasn't his family, their faces full of joy as they gathered at what was to be their last barbecue together. It was a different face, with a mole and thin lips and eyes that seemed to know a lot more than they let on.

  
The next day, at 12:25pm ( _Ah, he's early._ ), Ohno heard three knocks and watched the stall door open, revealing the other man. Ohno whispered, "Nino." Nino stood with his hand on the door, looking at Ohno for a long moment before coming into the stall and closing the door behind him.

Later, Ohno watched as Nino leaned toward the mirror and brushed an examining thumb over his lip where Ohno had bitten too forcefully. For some reason, today's session was a little rougher than their usual fare, but when Ohno had slammed his lips against Nino's, Nino had responded in kind, and after that they had both forgotten themselves.

Nino turned his head to look at Ohno when he noticed Ohno's gaze. "What is it, Ohno-san?"

Ohno smiled and shook his head. Nino stepped back from the sink and gave Ohno a hard glance before speaking again. "Did you get the kill order last night?"

Somehow Ohno wasn't surprised that Nino knew. He said simply, "Yes."

Nino laughed tightly. "Yeah, me, too."


	3. Chapter Three

**Chapter Three**

The streets of Tokyo were never more alive than they were at night. Crowds of people pressed in on all sides, and bright signs on buildings made sweet promises of used books and karaoke and delicious food. Cars zipped through the streets, headlights flashing by, quick and ephemeral like fireflies.

Ohno's walk home lasted about two hours. The trained killer in his mind both lauded and cautioned him: The streets were the perfect place for an assassin to get lost in the surge of chaos after a well-executed kill. But that wasn't his concern then.

Around him, the crowds thinned into clumps and strings and individuals, and eventually the only ones left were Ohno and his own thoughts. As he moved slowly between streetlights, he watched his shadow shift, stretching and receding weakly like a rusted spring.

  
The next day in the bathroom, Ohno observed Nino carefully as he came into the stall. Nino smiled and walked forward until he had Ohno pressed firmly against the dividing wall. As Ohno's hands automatically went to Nino's waist and Nino's hands to Ohno's hair, Nino spoke, hot against Ohno's lips. "We should decide on some rules."

Nino's fingers curled into Ohno's hair as they sank into a deep kiss. Their heads tilted and their mouths opened, tongues braiding together. After a moment, Ohno resurfaced and asked breathlessly, "Rules?"

"For our game," Nino answered. He kissed his way across Ohno's jaw and nibbled at the shell of Ohno's ear. "Our assassin game." His tongue flicked out at Ohno's earlobe before teasing more slowly down Ohno's neck.

"What rules did you have in mind?" Ohno's hands tightened as he pulled Nino's hips into a slow grind before pushing him away again, wanting to fend off the debilitating haze that was slowly encasing his senses. His head needed to be clear at least while they were still discussing things.

Nino hummed in feigned thought, pressing soft kisses to Ohno's collarbone. "Let's make work a kill-free zone."

Ohno's hands were tugging at Nino's shirt to untuck it, his warm fingers tickling at the waistband of Nino's pants. He heard Nino suck in a breath. "Work is kill-free. Okay." Work was where they took care of other business, after all. He nudged at Nino's head and brought their lips together for a chaste kiss. "What else?" he asked softly, waiting for Nino's response.

Nino closed the distance between them. They kissed again, and their lips moved naturally against each other. Their tongues reached out to rub softly together, and the kiss quickly grew heated, more frantic. Nino's hands tangled in Ohno's hair. Ohno's hands convulsed against the bare skin of Nino's back. They pulled apart abruptly, and their eyes met. Once their breathing slowed, Nino spoke again. "I want us to be looking at each other."

Ohno was stuck on the idea of looking at Nino, and he didn't know whether he meant now or forever or just when they were trying to kill each other. Lost in thought, he completely missed the movement of Nino's hands as they crawled down his sides and into his back pockets. But when those hands grabbed tightly and pulled their erections hard against each other, he was brought back to the very physical present. He let out a strained whimper, bucking into the sudden friction and moving against the continued contact.

Nino's right hand remained where it was in Ohno's pocket, kneading thickly in rhythm with their hips, but his left hand made its way between them to the front of Ohno's pants. After he made a quick flick at the button and twitch at the zipper, he reached into Ohno's boxers and took him firmly in his hand. Ohno groaned.

"Is that an 'okay', Ohno-san?"

Ohno knew that there had be a reason they'd never had conversations in the stall before. There was _something_ about what they did in the stall together that made it impossible to convey thoughts clearly, at least verbally.

At that moment he was trying desperately to figure out just what that something was, but his body was too preoccupied and his mind was drawing a blank, white and hot. All he could do in response to Nino's question was close his eyes and moan his consent.

  
Ohno would sometimes lie on the roof of his apartment building late at night, looking at the stars. It was a habit he'd fallen into during high school, whenever he came home late from Art Club activities. Tired, mentally drained from trying (and usually failing) to plaster his feelings onto a blank canvas and keep them from dripping off, he would slump onto the cool pavement of his driveway and stare at the sky. Occasionally, his mother would come outside and lie there with him. They spent hours upon silent hours together, watching the stars, breathing them in. Ohno never asked his mother what she was thinking about. Half the time, he didn't know what he was thinking about himself. And really, most of the time, all he wanted was just to look at the stars and think nothing at all.

Eventually Ohno's sister would come out, clad in a cooking apron, a serving spoon in the hand against her hip, and tell them that she'd made extra food for the two family idiots, if they were hungry. Ohno's mother would sit up and smile and say, "Satoshi, let's go eat." Ohno would smile back and follow her into the house.

That night, Ohno found himself yet again staring at the stars. They looked a little different now, but he knew that the difference was because of him -- maybe because of how he had changed since those days in high school -- but not because of the stars. Never because of the stars.

The stars were so simple, detached from the world around them. They could continue on existing without worries, until one day they vanished, twinkling into a vacuum of darkness. Ohno often thought about how nice it would be to join them. Watching them, he allowed himself to drift off, at least momentarily, and find himself in a place where nothing else mattered, where he could jump from star to star and enjoy their silent, unmoving adventures through time.

Just as he'd closed his eyes, his cell phone beeped in his pocket. He grimaced. He wanted, not for the first time, to just ignore everything happening around him, but he knew that he was hardly a star in the sky. He sighed and pulled out his phone, flipping it open to see a new e-mail message from an unknown sender. Narrowing his eyes, he pulled himself up, leaning back on an arm, and opened the message.

 _I was cleaning my gun today, and I thought of you._

"Nino," Ohno breathed. He smiled as he replied. _I don't clean my gun. I don't even know what kind of gun it is._

Nino's response was almost instantaneous. _What kind of assassin are you?!_ Ohno laughed out loud and leaned forward, crossing his legs under him. He curled over his phone as he typed a message back.

The wind rustled the leaves of nearby trees, and the sounds of cars stories below cut through the darkness. But Ohno's world on the roof was quiet and still, punctuated only by electronic beeps and an occasional chuckle.

  
Lying down with his hands behind his head afterwards, Ohno's attention returned to the stars. As his eyes dragged lazily from one star to the next, his mind began to turn in his head.

He let out a frustrated sigh when a system of clouds drifted by, unannounced and uninvited. They proceeded slowly, an endless parade of featureless shapes, undefined emotions strung together by an unlikely series of events. Ohno wanted to get past them all, to see the stars as they answered him, clear and doubtless. But the clouds were in the way, and he couldn't see a thing. He received no answers to the questions tumbling around in his head.

Just when did his relationship with Nino become emotional? When, over the course of five months, did their touches go from hard and demanding, desperate for physical release, to soft and tender, attending to each other's bodies instead of their own? When did it begin to matter to him that Nino was happy, and why did it matter in the first place? Ohno wanted to know, to find the solution to an unforeseen problem. He wanted to pinpoint the exact moment when things changed, to see whether he could take it all back.

But he couldn't focus on one single moment when there seemed to be so many of them, infinite points of light within the cloudy darkness. When was it? He couldn't tell. Maybe it was two nights ago, when his own reaction to the kill order wasn't what he expected. Maybe it was three weeks ago, when he kissed a paper cut on Nino's finger and realized just how much he loved those hands. Maybe it was when it all started, when he lost himself in those eyes and never bothered to find a way out, or maybe the next day, when Nino dropped a handkerchief on his desk and the first part of Ohno's body to react was, unexpectedly, his heart. He knew that the points of light were there, too many to count, but he just couldn't see any single one well enough to grab it and hold onto it as he pivoted around it and turned back the clock. So he decided to work through the chronology.

It all started as a bodily exchange. Ohno hadn't cared to know anything else about the man, because his body was enough. But wasn't it strange that the physical feeling of that skin under his hands had somehow transformed into a kind of emotional need? That every time he was physically with the other man, he was drowning in a sense of personal fulfillment, of completion?

If nothing else, six years of killing people was supposed to separate his emotions from his physical acts. Bodies no longer had anything to do with the souls in them, and they certainly had no bearing on his own soul.

If that was true, though, then why was he feeling this way?

  
Long after Ohno had given up on finding an answer in the shielded stars that night, the clouds passed by to reveal the speckled sky once again. Ohno's phone beeped. Another message from Nino: _I want to see you._

Ohno sat up as he typed his response. _Now?_

 _Come to the park by your apartment._ Oh, right. He knew where Ohno lived. _I'll be waiting._

Ohno stood up, stretching his limbs and rolling his neck before checking his gun in his coat pocket to see how many bullets were left. Satisfied, he sent one last message. _I'm on my way._

  
Nino was sitting on a park bench when Ohno got there. The light from the lamp above him shone down, revealing all of the hidden pockets of shadow along Nino's body, creating countless more. He was a living contradiction, where light and dark mingled, where emotions stirred endlessly and laid perfectly, numbly still. As Ohno approached, Nino looked up from the gun in his hands and smiled. "Ohno-san."

Ohno motioned at Nino's hands as he sat down next to him, their knees knocking together. "So how do you clean a gun anyway?"

Nino pressed himself into Ohno's side, pausing with their faces an inch apart to look into Ohno's eyes, and fished his gun out of his pocket. "Here, I'll show you." With careful fingers, he dismantled the gun. He pulled solvent and a cloth from his own pocket, narrating as he slowly picked his way through the parts. He might have said something about feeling sorry for such a neglected gun, but Ohno heard none of it. He was too busy remembering to breathe as he watched Nino's small hands and kind eyes and soft smile.

When Nino's fingers clicked the parts back into place, Ohno realized with a start that Nino was watching him. How long had he been lost in that pleasant voice and those smooth movements? Suddenly embarrassed, he grabbed his gun from Nino's hands and looked away, focusing on the lamp above them. Moths flitted around it, swooping in to ding against the glass before flying back out again.

Ohno heard Nino shift beside him. "You know, someone once told me that conbini lights don't attract bugs." Ohno smiled. He shouldn't have been surprised that they were thinking about the same thing.

They sat in silence, watching the moths dance around the lamp. There were two left; they flew loops around each other, full of energy and grace, but also full of quiet solemnity.

Ohno felt a hand on his thigh, and he turned to see Nino sitting there, looking at the tree across the path. "Ohno-san... Let's do this, huh?" Ohno looked at the ground as Nino stood next to him. He watched Nino's shadow, desperate to see any signs of hesitation, any reason for him not to do what he was about to do, but Nino was as swift and composed as ever. Ohno stood, his body feeling ten times heavier than it normally did.

When he looked up, Nino was standing two paces away, facing him. Ohno lifted his arm and levelled his gun at Nino's head. Nino mimicked his movements, and Ohno raised his eyebrows in surprise. "I thought you were left-handed."

Nino smirked, and Ohno smirked back. They'd learned a lot about each other in five months. "I use my right hand to write and shoot."

"Ah," Ohno replied.

"So," Nino said. "Three, two, one, go?"

Ohno nodded, swallowing thickly. His heart was pounding so loudly in his chest that he could barely hear himself as he spoke. "Three."

"Two."

"One."

Ohno twisted his hand the tiniest bit, and he pulled the trigger. The sound of two simultaneous gunshots echoed through the park.

Nino, eyes wide, stared at Ohno, and Ohno stared back, just as shocked. On the ground between Ohno's legs was a round bullet hole, a cloud of dirt puffed up into the air around it. Several yards behind Nino, there was a similar hole, carved neatly into the tree across the path.

Ohno watched as Nino's eyes worked through a series of emotions, each too quick to identify. He saw the gun fall from Nino's hand. He took a step forward, but Nino was already there, meeting him halfway as they melted into a kiss. Ohno's eyes slipped closed, and his arms wrapped tightly around Nino's back as Nino's hands roamed gently across his face. Ohno could feel the calluses on Nino's fingertips as they rested on his cheeks. He wondered why he hadn't noticed them before, and he thought that it was maybe because of the overwhelming rush of senses in the bathroom, but this kiss was slow, slow, slow, and it didn't need to go anywhere, and he could concentrate on everything. Breaking the kiss, Ohno took one of Nino's fingers in his mouth and sucked at it, licking the callus. He could tell that it wasn't from a gun, but he didn't know what could have caused it. He wanted to know where it was from, wanted to know more, wanted to know everything about the man whose lips fit so perfectly against his.

They kissed again, and Ohno was filled with that sense of completion, that idea that this was where he belonged, that if he stayed right here, with Nino against his lips and in his arms, the rest of the pieces would rain from the sky and fall into place around them.

They pulled apart, foreheads pressed together, looking into each other's eyes. Nino whispered, "I'll kill you tomorrow, okay?" There was something in Nino's eyes that Ohno couldn't read, but he agreed anyway. He closed his eyes and leaned in for another kiss.


	4. Chapter Four

**Chapter Four**

Waiting in the bathroom stall the next day, Ohno wondered if things would be different, if Nino's hands would be more shy or his expression less sure, if Ohno himself would stumble through his actions once Nino made an appearance. He wondered if last night meant to Nino what it meant to him. He wondered what exactly it meant to him anyway.

He wondered if he was overthinking it all.

The minutes ticked by until he heard the usual three knocks. They were, as always, sharp and even, methodical like the man who sounded them every day against the plastic door. They betrayed nothing of Nino's feelings, if he was feeling anything at all. He simply opened the door and came in and pressed himself up against Ohno, and Ohno was instantly hard, and it was like the night before had never happened.

But it had. When all was said and done (mostly done, not a lot said), Nino gently took his hand and led the way out of the stall, their fingers threaded loosely together. Ohno could literally hear the blood rush to his cheeks, and his face in the mirror vaguely reminded him of the face of a thirteen-year-old girl who'd just given a box of chocolates to the boy she liked on Valentine's Day -- embarrassed, unsure, and violently red like she was having some kind of allergic reaction, but still too excited for words. A sideways glance revealed to him that Nino was looking relatively normal, his head bent over his hands as he washed them. But his fluffy hair failed to hide the tips of his ears, which glowed the tiniest bit pink. Ohno was elated.

 _Thirteen-year-old Ohno ran into the house, pigtails streaming, and flew to his mother where she sat on the sofa in the living room. "Mommy, I think he likes me! I think he likes me!" His mother tapped him on the nose and congratulated him for drumming up the courage to say something. "Let's see what he says on White Day!"_

"Nino, have you ever given anyone a White Day present?"

Nino turned off the faucet before he shook out his hands and took Ohno's handkerchief. They both watched Nino's hands as he spoke, taking the question in stride as if it hadn't been plucked randomly out of Ohno's wild imagination. "No. I think it's a stupid holiday." He looked up and passed the handkerchief back, considering Ohno carefully. "If I really like someone, why should I wait a whole month to do something about it?"

Ohno grinned.

  
They hadn't said anything after that or made any plans to meet, but Ohno went to the park that night, confident that Nino would be there. He was.

Nino stood up as soon as he spotted Ohno. "Finally. I'm hungry. Come with me to get something to eat."

They walked in silence to a nearby curry restaurant. The only other patron was a tired-looking man off to the side, slurping slowly at his food and reading a week-old newspaper. Squinting at the headlines, Ohno punched absently at the ticket machine before realizing that he'd chosen the most expensive thing on the menu. He swore under his breath and took his change -- much less than he would have liked -- before heading toward a table for two near the front. He sat down and his gaze fell on Nino.

Nino stood in front of the machine with a lazy slouch, arms crossed, head tipped to one side as his eyes swooped back and forth between options. After an extended pause, he moved with the grace of a cat (and, Ohno realized, smiling, the pickiness of one as well), extracting one arm from the other and pushing a button with a sturdy thumb. He picked up his ticket and his change -- a 500 yen coin, which he smiled at before he slipped it into his pocket -- and headed to Ohno's chosen table.

It was strange, sitting in a restaurant with Nino, watching as the other man casually took stock of his surroundings. For the first time since they'd known each other, they were together without pretense. It wasn't about sex, and it wasn't about killing each other. They were just sitting there. Nino noticed Ohno's gaze and smiled at him. Ohno smiled back. It felt like a date.

As the waitress placed their orders in front of them, Ohno wiped his suddenly clammy palms on his pants. He watched Nino take an appraising bite, and he cleared his throat. "So did you not eat dinner tonight?"

Nino looked up from his plate and sucked some stray grains of rice into his mouth. "Ah, well, I don't really cook, so I usually just buy prepackaged stuff, but I was busy with something and lost track of time."

"I see." Ohno wanted to know what exactly he'd been busy with. He wasn't sure that he'd be able to ask him later.

Nino bounced a question back. "How about you? Do you cook?"

Ohno adjusted his chopsticks before taking a bite of his dish. It was much better than the cold, lifeless stacks of instant ramen in his kitchen cupboard, though he suspected that the taste was enhanced by the company. He swallowed appreciatively. "I boil water really well."

Across from him, Nino laughed. It rang on a shimmering high note through the restaurant. "Well, Ohno-san, it certainly sounds like you're talented."

Ohno nodded, swept up in the flow of the conversation. He said with weighty seriousness, "I am. I'm a pro. I'll give you lessons if you want."

"Oh, please do." Nino chuckled, looking down at his curry. He took a bite and smiled bitterly.

They talked easily for the rest of the meal about anything and everything, but none of the important things. It seemed that neither of them had been willing to toe that line, not out loud, so after some initial doubts and uneasiness, Ohno let himself go and allowed himself to enjoy the evening.

Maybe it was a date after all. And as they were shouting their thanks to the cook on their way out, Ohno realized that he wanted nothing more than to have another one, another date with Nino.

Once they got back to the park, he stepped swiftly toward Nino and gave him a goodnight kiss, slow and lingering, his hands cupping Nino's face, his shoulders relaxing when he felt Nino kiss back. It was the end of their date, after all, so it made sense. Ohno broke the kiss and opened his eyes. He backed away and pulled the gun from his jacket, watching as Nino did the same. Suddenly they looked much like they did the night before, facing each other, guns at the ready.

Ohno didn't know why, but his heart was calm that night as they counted down the numbers. When they got to "go", Ohno shot a bullet straight up into the air. He looked to his far left, where a bullet hole burned under a bush. It hadn't even come close.

Nino smiled, putting his gun away. "Tomorrow, then?"

Ohno didn't know that it wasn't another promise to kill him. A large part of him guessed that it was, but he was okay with that. He nodded. "Tomorrow."

  
In the end, "tomorrow" never came for Ohno. Or at least the "tomorrow" in which he got a bullet in the head by Nino's hand.

It reminded him of one of those clever paradoxes that a friend had mentioned in middle school. "Tomorrow" was always coming, but it never arrived, because once it did, it became "today". Clever. Ohno tried it once. Blue was blue until it mixed with red, and then it wasn't blue anymore because it became purple. But he remembered saying the same thing as a kindergartener with his finger up his nose, and no one had been particularly impressed then, either. So he decided to look for his calling elsewhere.

He was pretty sure that his calling _wasn't_ in the bathroom stall, jammed somewhere between Nino's back against the wall and Nino's legs around his waist. But as he pounded deeper into Nino's body and Nino's arms tightened around his neck, the both of them slick with sweat and the heat of their bodies, Ohno decided that he didn't mind starting the search for his calling sometime later. Sometime when he wasn't so busy.

  
True to their nature, the two men had fallen into a routine. At work, their relationship was purely physical (though as the days passed and each session became more fulfilling than the last, Ohno began to question whether it was ever "purely physical" to begin with). At night, they would have dates in the park, talking for hours on a bench or under a tree, or once behind some bushes, pausing now and then to snicker at a couple of teenagers as they made out across the way.

Each date would end with the two of them pointing their guns at each other like something out of a spaghetti western, but the shots never failed to miss. One night, Nino's bullet landed half an inch from Ohno's left foot. Ohno watched as the smirk materialized on Nino's face. The next night, Ohno's bullet shot by Nino's leg, a hair's breadth away. After that, it had developed into a contest to see just how close their bullets could get to the other person's body without actually hitting him. Ohno thought that shooting a gun had never been so fun.

With their new routine in place, sex for lunch and long talks for dinner, Ohno started to believe that he had finally sifted the physical from the emotional like he was supposed to. He was dating the person he was actually supposed to kill, but as long as he separated his body from his heart, the kill, whenever it happened, would be just as easy done as it was said.

But unfortunately, he knew, really knew, that he was making up excuses for a problem that would have to be solved eventually, a problem that wouldn't wrap up nearly as nicely as he pretended it would. He was just putting off the inevitable, after all.

The end was probably closer than he realized, and definitely sooner than he wanted it to be. He could taste the sickening, metallic tang of blood in his mouth whenever he thought about it.

  
Blue had been Ohno's favorite color for most of his life. Blue was cool and calm and refreshing. The sky was blue, and the sea was blue, and both were endless in their possibilities. His favorite shirt in high school was blue, and he wore it daily under his high school uniform until the edges of the sleeves had unravelled and the English lettering on the front had flaked off.

Ohno was mildly pleased but mostly intrigued when he happened upon an unmarked envelope at his apartment one evening. It had been about a month since he'd received the soft beige envelope entrusting him with Nino's death, but this one was new and different. He'd never received anything like it before. It was a deep, rich blue, and Ohno didn't have a place for it in his envelope drawer.

But the soothing hue of the envelope hardly matched its contents, which screamed an urgent reminder that one Ninomiya Kazunari was to be killed. It said nothing more, but the consequences of failing were understood, had been understood for six years now. Ohno sat in front of his drawer, grimacing, and wondered when blue had become such an ugly color.

  
On his way to the park that night, Ohno looked up at the sky. The clouds bunched together, dark and thick. The stars were nowhere to be found.


	5. Chapter Five

**Chapter Five**

The last thing Ohno felt before he stopped feeling altogether were Nino's eyes on him, cool and calculating, as he took his place on the bench. He was vaguely aware of the pressure of Nino's thigh where it pressed against his own and the lilting tones of Nino's voice as it floated through the space between them. But no matter how much he tried, he was unable to make out the details -- the delicate thread of his tailored slacks against his legs, the suspensions of sound between one word and the next. Somewhere deep in Ohno's body, he felt a pang of loneliness. He regretted that he couldn't tune his ears to what the other man was saying (it was usually articulate and interesting, after all, and always inviting), and it hurt almost physically. But he wasn't upset by it. He didn't even notice it, really. He had long left his body, with its five senses tuned to ten degrees of awareness. He instead found himself planted deeply in his mind.

His mind was never the same thing twice. Sometimes it was a stark white hallway, narrow and with a short ceiling, and he could spend hours there painting the walls with his fingers or with an endless supply of colors as he walked along. Sometimes it was a pitch black plane, stretching hopelessly in all directions, and he didn't have to do anything but sit and stare blankly into the emptiness. And that night, as his body sat limply on a park bench, Ohno's mind was a tight cylinder, its walls shooting straight up to an infinite ceiling. It was every shade of blue, the color he'd come to hate, and it shone with a scarlet red that dripped grotesquely down around him. He would give anything to be able to climb out of the cylinder, out of his mind. He wanted to feel the breeze as it brushed against his skin, to watch Nino's hands as they made everything he said that much more tangible. But he kept slipping on the pools of red, failing to find a real way out, until his hands were so thoroughly stained that he was convinced the color couldn't be washed away.

Ohno couldn't be sure whether Nino had stopped in the middle of a sentence or he'd been done talking for an hour already, but by that time, whatever time it was, Ohno had been able to pull himself back to the physical present, at least partially. He could tell, though, that he wasn't completely there. There was a dull pressure against his temple, but it mixed with the sharp points of liquid red falling onto him. He turned his head slowly, automatically, and in the blur of blue, he could barely register the press of Nino's gun against his forehead. Ohno's eyes followed Nino's movements, and he saw the way the other man stood and stepped away and aimed his gun from a distance. But those movements were shifting in and out of focus. Ohno's eyes constantly flitted back to his hands painted red and to the silent blue hell in every direction.

Ohno knew this was important, knew that he should be completely there in the park with Nino, but he couldn't get out. He was still drowning in the red-streaked cylinder. Numbly, he let his body take over.

His limbs worked on their own. He stood, reached into his pocket, and lifted his arm. The gun was cold and heavy in his hand, but he knew only because his memory, not his palm, told him so. He counted down, the words slipping quietly from his mouth and falling like dead weight to the ground. His finger pulled the trigger, but he didn't feel it. Gunshots rang out, but he didn't hear them.

Ohno had never been on a rollercoaster, but he figured it was something like this. Since he'd sat down in his seat, he'd been climbing to the top of the first hill in slow motion, not feeling the clicks of the track but knowing they were there. It was as if he could sense everything and nothing all at once. And after an instant and a lifetime of climbing, he made it to the top, where everything slowed to a breathless stop. He could see the park around him, the families scampering down below, the twists of the track in front of him, the bullet as it spun lazily through the air, but he didn't understand any of it, didn't know what it all meant. He was just there.

And suddenly, too suddenly, he fell into a reckless nosedive. Every cell in his body screamed.

Nino let out a cry and curled into himself, wincing and clutching his left shoulder. Ohno's senses instantly shot back into focus. He smelled the gun powder in the air, felt the pounding of his heart, saw the look of pain on Nino's face.

Ohno dropped his gun and raced forward, his eyes fixed on where his bullet had clipped the other man. Words spilled from his lips, but he couldn't make out the apologies and the excuses from the fear rising in his chest and his stomach clawing its way up his throat. His hands pressed at the wound, blood seeping through the material of Nino's shirt and staining his fingers in a way that seemed too disgustingly familiar, like it was a movie he'd been watching all night. But he didn't care. He had to stop the bleeding, maybe he could use his shirt as a tourniquet, he'd learned how a long time ago...

Nino's hands closed slowly around his, and he stilled. He looked up at Nino, who was smiling softly at him. Ohno couldn't tell what was in Nino's eyes, but it looked nothing like the panic he himself was feeling. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths, leaning his cheek into Nino's. He heard, really heard, Nino's words against his skin: "You didn't mean to, I know. Not yet at least, right? I know." Each reassurance was punctuated by a soft kiss in front of his ear, high on his cheek, on the tip of his nose, at the corner of his lips.

Ohno opened his eyes again and looked at the face in front of him, impossibly close. He found peace in that smile and those eyes, which glinted playfully through the pain. Ohno laughed sheepishly, embarrassed at his reaction but relieved beyond words to see that Nino was still there, still Nino. He grinned and allowed himself to relax. He was with Nino, after all. If there was any place in the world where it was safe to relax, it was wherever Nino was.

Nino cocked his head toward his shoulder and said, "You have to take responsibility, you know." Ohno chuckled when he realized it kind of sounded like Nino was pregnant. Ohno said so. Nino laughed. "Either way, Ohno-san, you're the one who did it, so you have to take care of me."

Ohno threaded his handkerchief around Nino's shoulder and tied it tight, pausing briefly at Nino's strained sounds of discomfort, before he agreed.

  
During the walk, Ohno looked up at the sky again. The clouds were still there, but they were thinner and wispier than before. He could almost hear the stars as they burrowed through the haze, calling out to him and letting him know that they were still there, still trying to reach him. _Wait for us, Satoshi,_ he heard them call. _We'll be there soon!_ He stopped in anticipation for the stars to catch up.

A hand brushed against his cheek and pulled him back down to earth. He felt lips soft against his, barely there. As he kissed back, his hand itched to touch, to feel Nino's skin, but before he could do anything, Nino had pulled away. He gave Ohno a look that seemed significant, and he scratched Ohno's itch for him, lacing their fingers together before leading them onward.

  
Nino's apartment building wasn't far from the park. Ohno knew the address, of course, but hadn't thought about it enough to realize just how close they were to each other. Tokyo was a strange city like that -- you could live practically on top of a person and never see him leave his house, but you could also meet a stranger in completely unforeseen circumstances just to realize that you'd been neighbors all along. Sometimes the two realities overlapped.

The apartment itself wasn't much different from Ohno's. Probably a little nicer, if he were to judge the book by its cover. The paint on the door wasn't peeling, and it didn't take an extra jiggle for Nino to get the doorknob to turn properly. Ohno stepped into the entryway with a quiet greeting, not bothering to untie his shoelaces before he stepped on the heels of his shoes and maneuvered them off. Toeing gingerly into a pair of house slippers, his eyes followed Nino's escape into the bathroom, where he was to presumably find a first-aid kit. Nino slipped out of sight, and the sounds of aimless rummaging filled his ears. Ohno continued to walk into the apartment, his eyes wandering.

It was messier than he expected, though he wasn't sure why he'd been expecting anything anyway -- everything about the other man was unexpected. Against the wall by the bathroom was a modest closet, sliding doors opened to reveal a disheveled collection of blankets and clothes. On the floor of the closet was a cardboard box filled with large white envelopes, organized into sections by year. Ohno stepped closer and looked at the numbers. Five years was awfully close to Ohno's six.

Ohno heard a whiny curse word coming from the general vicinity of the bathroom, but he chose to ignore it as soon as the area on the floor in front of him caught his eye. The futon at his feet was small and homey, slept in. The guitar on top looked almost like an illusion in comparison, so smooth and unmarred that he was certain it was only used as a decoration. Ohno sat down on the futon, slowly picking the guitar up and placing it in his lap. His hand wound around the fingerboard and his fingers naturally found the frets for the only chord he remembered from his impromptu lessons with a high school friend. His fingers pressed down, and he watched his thumb pluck into the strings. A sweet D Major chord sang in the air, and his head was slowly filled with the sound, with images of Nino's adorable hands and Nino's short fingers and Nino's mysterious calluses. He thought about the hard strings against his fingers and mumbled his understanding, smiling.

A breath, soft and low behind his ear: "Who said you could touch my guitar?" Ohno turned to look at Nino, who was glaring at him with no real heat in his gaze. "That's right, no one." Nino answered himself with a grin, loosening Ohno's fingers around the guitar with his own. "Now stop goofing around and fix me."

Setting the guitar down and pressing their lips together, Ohno was happy to oblige.

  
The process of cleaning and dressing a wound was like tying shoes to Ohno. He'd done it enough times, learned the quickest and best ways to do it, that he didn't even have to think about it while it was happening. Instead he concentrated on planting kisses all over Nino's body between steps. Disinfectant, knee, ointment, wrist, gauze, neck. Nino giggled at each touch of his lips, floppy arms pushing him away weakly and an embarrassed "What are you doing, stupid?" each time. It just made Ohno want to kiss him more. And he did.

  
Ohno came back from washing his hands in the bathroom to find Nino lying tiredly on the futon, staring at the ceiling. There was a markedly empty space next to him, so Ohno crawled in to lie down beside the other man. They laid in silence, the lack of voices magnifying the quiet rhythm of their breathing and the shuffle of the blanket between them. Ohno squeezed when it seemed that their hands had found each other. He rolled closer to Nino, curling into the other man and kissing him softly on the cheek. He stayed there for a second, watched as Nino blinked slowly, happily. Ohno rolled onto his back again. "I really have to kill you, you know."

Nino hummed and said, "I know." His hand tightened in Ohno's. "To be honest, though, I don't really want to die, so I might have to kill you first."

Ohno's eyes played with a small crack in the ceiling. A single blemish in Nino's perfect apartment. He'd never seen anything so beautiful. "Okay," he whispered.

Hours later, Ohno's eyes were still on the crack in the ceiling. Small flowers had sprouted from it, and bees and butterflies floated around it. He tried to paint it black, tried to count sheep as they jumped over it, tried to calculate sums as numbers danced along it. But regardless of what he did, Ohno couldn't fall asleep, couldn't close his eyes, couldn't look away. His mind remained on the crack, which always returned from darkness and wool and equations to flora and insects.

The crack had become an ever-growing garden on the ceiling. As Ohno shifted to get a better view of one particularly happy-looking flower, he noticed that Nino's hand was still clasped tightly in his own, that the tense air around them hadn't yet relaxed into sleep. Ohno watched a caterpillar stumble along a wide leaf. He wondered if the other man was looking at the same garden.


	6. Chapter Six

**Chapter Six**

Ohno didn't ask for Nino's assassin story. It came up naturally, on its own. And it began with a blank statement of fact, almost innocent in its simplicity, breaking the hours of quiet that Ohno had spent watching flowers bloom on Nino's ceiling. Thinking about it, Ohno realized that there was nothing natural, really, about speaking out of nothing and into emptiness. But as soon as the words came out, Ohno closed his eyes in understanding, as if the illogic of it all was the only thing in the world that made sense. It was a fork in a road that split for no reason and came back together, a wind chime that tinkled in the dead air of winter. Ohno shouldn't have known it was coming, and he didn't until it did. But when Nino spoke suddenly, seemingly without inducement, it felt as if they'd been having a conversation all along.

"It's not tragic or anything," Nino said, as if he knew Ohno's _was_ tragic. "I was never very good at interacting with others, and it was always hard for me to get close to people. I'd try to make friends, and usually we'd be friendly for a while, but then I'd want to have some space to think for just a second. So I'd say something nasty, and they'd pull away permanently."

Ohno somehow couldn't see it, couldn't imagine a Nino who wasn't frank and gentle and teasing and just the tiniest bit shy.

"I did have a friend once, growing up, but I think he was just too stupid to realize when I was pushing him away." Nino laughed a nostalgic kind of laugh, and Ohno could feel Nino's hand in his, fluttering like the long-lost memories in his head. Ohno brushed his thumb over a knuckle. Nino's hand squeezed for a long moment before relaxing again. "He was waiting at my door to walk to school with me the next day, and I couldn't have been more grateful."

Ohno spoke for the first time that night, his voice rasping in the darkness. "Maybe he was smarter than you thought."

"No, he was an idiot." Ohno laughed. Nino let him. They eventually fell back into silence and stayed there until Nino spoke again. "But he was a good guy. I missed him a lot when we went to different schools for college. And, well... yeah." Nino let out a full-body sigh. Ohno had never been more empathetic in his life. "I dunno. I was lonely, bored, whatever. So I found something interesting to do with my time."

Nino rolled slowly, lying on his side to face Ohno. Ohno mirrored his movements. "I'm not a nice person, Ohno-san, not like you." Ohno opened his mouth to retort but closed it just as quickly. Maybe Ohno wasn't a nice person either, not exactly, but they _were_ different, different in a way that he couldn't quite identify. Nino smirked slightly. "I never really cared about life, you know. Living and dying. It was all the same to me. Because if you're going to die anyway, you may as well make it interesting, right?" Ohno shifted in place. Nino chuckled. "You're different, huh? I didn't realize it until _after_ I started killing people... how special life is, how much it means to live and breathe and see the world around you. But you probably knew it from the beginning."

Ohno didn't know what to say. Nino was a much smarter person than he'd ever let on. But Ohno wasn't too surprised when he realized it, when the thought materialized in his head. Somewhere inside him, he'd known for a while.

"You know, I don't love my life. I sit at a desk and lower my head to idiots. I spend my days shuffling timidly and keeping to myself and being bored out of my mind. But at least it's interesting to think about living and breathing and being alive, right? What will I be doing in five years? Ten? What else will cell phones be capable of? What kind of porn will be the most popular? Will the conbini across the street still sell the cheapest meat buns? Is my stupid friend still going to be stupid?" Nino paused, and Ohno watched as his eyes roamed across his face and landed on his mouth. Ohno bit his lower lip slightly. Nino's eyes flicked up to Ohno's. He felt Nino's breath against his cheek. He didn't know how they'd gotten so close. "My life may not amount to anything special, but I won't know until I live it."

Ohno smiled. "I thought you were more cynical than that."

Nino laughed quietly, closing his eyes. "I thought I was, too."

  
It wasn't until the soft light of dawn was filtering in through the curtains and Nino was cursing with a jerk against him that Ohno woke up. Ohno yanked his eyes open and located the alarm clock, blinking an unbelievable "5:30" in giant red letters and shrieking incessantly. He noticed Nino's left hand laying stiffly next to it, close but not quite there, and he took a moment to give Nino's shoulder a kiss before kneeling over him to slap the alarm into silence. He retreated slightly, leaning over Nino, grumbling nonsense words into his neck.

He felt Nino's hand push at him slightly. Ohno flipped bonelessly back onto the futon as Nino sat up. "Sorry," he mumbled, "low blood pressure."

Two hours later, a towel landed on Ohno's head. It felt slightly damp and smelled like Nino. Ohno breathed it in.

"Your turn. I'll lend you some boxers or something."

Waking slowly, Ohno barely contained his protest. He wanted to say that he usually took showers at night, that he probably wouldn't be able to give Nino his boxers back. He hesitated, catching the words on their way out of his mouth, and said instead, "Thanks," before he stumbled his sleepy way to the bathroom.

When he came back, rubbing the towel recklessly in his hair as he walked, he spotted Nino sitting cross-legged on the futon, his dress shirt unbuttoned. Beside him was the first-aid kit and the roll of bloody gauze from the night before. Ohno stepped in front of him, and Nino began buttoning his shirt, working with meticulous hands from the buttom up. Without looking up, he said softly, "I wish we could just quit." He raised his head, and Ohno thought he looked a little lost even though he was in his own apartment.

Ohno opened his mouth to speak, but he was stuck on the words. Nino smiled lightly. "So is it Naked Wednesday in your department or what?"

  
Ohno had left first, running back to his apartment to grab his things before taking his usual train to work. When Nino walked by his department at 8:45 that morning, carrying his suitcase with his right arm instead of his left, Ohno shifted in his seat. Their relationship had changed in one night, the instant Ohno's bullet missed its mark. Nino's boxers bunched strangely around Ohno's thighs, and his favorite handkerchief was left in Nino's apartment, dyed a murky brown instead of the enchanting purple it was supposed to be.

At 12:15, Ohno looked up to see Nino, standing in front of his desk. Nino dropped his yellow handkerchief on top of a pile of documents before depositing a second one, bright red, in Ohno's lap. He said casually, "You don't have your bento today."

Ohno smiled politely. "I didn't have time to make it this morning."

"Well, why don't you come with me to get something to eat?"

Ohno nodded and stood up, grabbing both handkerchiefs and putting them in his pocket before walking with Nino to the cafeteria.

Slurping noisily at their noodles, they talked about anything and everything, laughing freely. It was the only simple pleasure they would allow themselves before they went on to talk about the important things.

  
Ohno opened the stall door for Nino, letting the other man step in first before he closed the door behind them. They leaned against opposite walls of the stall, taking in the sight of each other. Nino was slightly hunched over, his arms crossed loosely over his stomach, his eyes working endlessly along Ohno's body until his gaze fell to the floor. Ohno waited for him to say something.

"I wasn't kidding, you know. About quitting."

Ohno thought he'd heard a story like that before, a story about quitting the assassin business and leading a normal life. He thought of catching fireflies during the summer, watching them flash against his fingers before they zipped away. He thought of eating the bento he had as a child, filled with rice balls and vegetables cut into animal shapes and love. He thought of the stars at night, of the quiet warmth beside him and the cool pavement against his back, of the lights from the house and the ambient noise from the streets around him. He thought of home, and what it meant to be home, and the day filled with pink and sunshine and answering machine messages when home changed forever for him. He'd definitely heard a story like that before, a story about quitting. He wished it'd had a happier ending.

"Nino, you know we can't do that." Ohno watched as Nino looked up at him with a bitter smile. Of course. Nino already knew that it wouldn't work.

But Ohno understood. Sometimes it was about saying what you really felt, even if it wouldn't mean anything in the end. It was about wanting the impossible and pretending it was okay to have it. It was about falling in love with the wrong person and damning the consequences.

Ohno stepped forward and kissed Nino soundly on the lips.

  
They decided what to do in the bathroom that day. They spoke in whimpers and pants and grunts and moans, and Ohno wished that he'd always been this eloquent.

  
That night, Ohno heard a knock on his apartment door. He opened it and took the bottle of wine that Nino held out to him. He worked his way back into the apartment, listening to the click of the door and the shuffling of feet behind him. Once he'd found his dollar-store wine glasses in the kitchen, he began his walk back to the living room but stopped when he saw Nino standing quietly in the middle of the room, staring straight ahead with his mouth hanging slightly open. Ohno's paintings lined the walls, floor to ceiling, in every direction. Ohno had gotten used to seeing them there, but he'd somehow forgotten that it was Nino's first time in his apartment. Somewhere in the past six months, he'd begun to take for granted their mutual knowledge and understanding. He was as shocked at himself as Nino seemed to be at his surroundings.

But really, there was still so much to learn, so much to say. It only made sense that there were surprises sometimes. Ohno had at least 116 stories to tell, after all, and by the looks of it, Nino wanted to hear each one. He was walking around the room, stopping in front of each painting. He would tip his head to one side or another before nodding with a satisfied hum and moving on to the next. He stalled for a long time in front of one of the smaller paintings, swirled and sparkling like a cloudy night sky. "Every one of these is blue. You must really like that color, huh?"

"I used to."

Nino turned to look at Ohno. "These are fantastic. I'm not even an artist, but I can understand them." Ohno nodded graciously, waiting for Nino to return to his appraisal of the paintings, but Nino's gaze remained. Ohno considered the small painting behind the other man, with blues and greys and spots of white. There was one spot in particular that stood out, cutting through the fog and outshining the rest. Ohno didn't remember painting it.

Ohno looked at Nino, who'd left the question hanging in his statement. There was a reason Nino could understand the paintings. What was it? Ohno thought that it didn't need to be said, but one look at Nino told him that he wanted Ohno to say it anyway. He swallowed before speaking. "I paint one every time I've killed a person."

"Is that so?" Nino's response was easy, conversational. "I guess you'll be painting a new one soon, then."

Ohno nodded. "Maybe even tomorrow."


	7. Chapter Seven

**Chapter Seven**

Ohno woke up with the sun the next morning, stretching lazily and yawning so widely that his jaw popped. He heard the shower running in the bathroom and he paused mid-stretch, his right hand massaging his cheek. A faint melody floated toward him above the rush of water, and Ohno instantly regretted not having heard Nino sing until then. Nino had a breathtaking voice, raw and honest, if a little south of the right pitch at times. But it was perfect, and just the thing Ohno wanted to hear that morning. He decided to blame the pitch on the warped sound of smooth tones against cold tile.

There was something bittersweet about overhearing Nino's song on their last day. It was almost like a dirge in a major key, or a tribute to the life they wouldn't be leading together, or maybe something like "Nino's Greatest Hits" even though it was the first time he'd heard them. Lulled by the sweet vocals and their accompanying percussion -- the squeak of the hot water knob, the last drops of water, the hum of the exhaust fan -- Ohno curled back into the covers, rolling into the empty space next to him. It was still faintly warm.

Ohno sighed sleepily into his pillow. There was something about the whole situation that demanded an action-packed, guns-blazing kind of ending, but Ohno was never really that kind of person. As exciting as his life had become once Nino had entered the picture, and as much as that picture had come to focus more and more on the other man, Ohno wasn't liable to change his lifestyle so quickly. He liked to think of himself as a wanderer, walking along a narrow dirt path. He was alone, the only one who could decide which way to go and how he'd be going. Usually he walked slowly, not caring too much about the final destination but enjoying his journey along the way. He enjoyed watching as the world happen around him, the birds singing in the trees and the little bugs scurrying in the grass. There was, naturally, the occasional bump that he tripped over when he'd stopped paying attention to the road ahead of him, or a sharp turn that caught him by surprise and made it nearly impossible to find his place again. But if there was anything he could count on, it was that he was on _his_ road. His world spun under his feet at just the right pace, for the most part, and he only had to walk so quickly to keep up.

So really, as appropriate as it would have been to have a tense, suspenseful last day to end six months of intrigue and passion, Ohno knew that he didn't want it that way. He was satisfied with the slow, humdrum, everyday kind of day that he knew it was going to be.

Besides, they'd already come to an understanding in the bathroom at work, so there was no need for drama, for big explosions or elaborate sets. Even without words, Ohno knew that he could believe in Nino and in what they'd decided on together. He would stake his life on it.

Ohno felt small hands crawl up his sides as Nino nestled under the covers with him. Ohno's arms wrapped automatically around the other man, who was wearing a smile and a towel around his waist. His skin was just-out-of-the-shower damp and his hair, still a bit wet, stood up in messy spikes. Ohno nuzzled in closer and squeezed for a long moment. It was the best hug he'd ever had.

Reluctantly, he peeled away, rubbing at Nino's hair playfully. Nino grunted and swatted at his hand, and Ohno couldn't, didn't resist the urge to kiss him. Eventually he stood, pulling Nino up with him, and got ready for the day.

  
Somewhere between the time they stepped on the train together and the time they stepped back off a block from their building, it was established that their last day would be a silent day. It hadn't been stated specifically, not by words of course, nor consciously through any form of active communication. But it was something in the way Nino's finger tapped to an unknown melody against Ohno's leg, the way Nino smiled when Ohno didn't hide his gaze, the way neither of them had felt a need to say anything the entire ride there. Sometimes their actions communicated what their words couldn't, and even though the words had been nice, the stories had been fun, the jokes had struck Ohno as if he had 206 funny bones in his body, it had all started with actions. Not words. They were men built on the physical movement of their bodies, on killing without regard to the apologies that should have come with it. It made sense that their relationship was much the same.

A month ago, when they'd begun speaking to each other, Ohno wondered whether Nino would explain everything. Why he'd needed to wash his face in the bathroom that day, why he'd been attracted to Ohno specifically, why he hadn't said a word for five months when he was clearly so talkative. Nino never did mention it, not out loud. But Ohno thought he'd figured it out anyway. Looking back on five months of his own silence, he realized it. That his body had reacted to Nino's instinctively, in a way that words couldn't express. That words simply weren't capable of making their connection any deeper than it already was.

But words did have a place in their relationship. They'd made it that much easier for Ohno to understand his feelings. What his body suggested his mind confirmed. He was falling in love -- had fallen in love -- with a man full of wit, sarcasm, bitterness, and hope. They were cut from the same cloth, growing from the same experiences, but Nino had rewoven himself into something at once so simple and so complex. Without words, Ohno wouldn't have realized just how incredible Nino truly was, just how much sense it made to have fallen in love with him.

The two men parted ways in front of Ohno's department. As Nino waved a simple "goodbye" and headed toward the elevator, Ohno smiled. _There he goes,_ he thought, _the most amazing man I'll ever meet._

  
They didn't bother with the handkerchiefs at lunchtime. Nino came to Ohno's desk, dragging a chair over from a neighboring workspace, and they shared Ohno's bento. It had been sloppily made, and the vegetables trickled into the eggs unappetizingly, but Ohno refused to take the blame for it. He would have been able to concentrate properly if Nino hadn't been distracting him the entire time with kisses across the back of his neck and shoulders.

  
The stall hadn't changed much in the six months they'd occupied it. But when Ohno was hit with the thought that it was the last time they'd be meeting there, he was overcome with a sentimentality that he'd thought only Nino capable of. He drew with his finger on the stall door as Nino watched from behind him. An umbrella, with "Sato" and "Kazu" under it on either side. Ohno felt Nino's hands on his waist, arms slowly wrapping around him and pulling him back into the other man. He turned around and returned the gesture, relaxing and feeling at peace. He sighed contentedly, and the damp hug amongst bed sheets from that morning was swiftly knocked into second place.

The kisses were slow and unrushed. Ohno took the opportunity to touch what he could, to explore, to appreciate the calluses now that he knew where they'd come from. When fifteen minutes had passed, they hadn't had a reason to clean up and wash their hands. The kisses had been enough for them.

They walked out of the stall, as calm and composed as a slow symphony. Ohno turned to give the stall an appreciative look. It was their last time in that bathroom, in their stall. It seemed a little silly to want to express gratitude to a bathroom, its tiles thick with grime and its overhead light buzzing and blinking like an old, forgotten story. But as he stood there with Nino, their hands clasped together, and he took in his surroundings, he realized that there wasn't any place in the whole world more stunning.

  
Ohno got to the park first that night. He sat on the bench and awaited his companion, tipping his head back to look at the sky. It was the clearest night he'd seen all month.

He stood when he saw Nino approach. He nodded, and Nino nodded back, and together they headed to the nearby curry restaurant, Ohno's favorite even though he'd only been there once.

Dinner in silence was everything he'd hoped it would be. The restaurant was busier than it had been the last time they were there, and the air was filled with the sounds of food sizzling in the kitchen and the lively chatter of the other patrons. But Ohno's eyes were trained on Nino, and his fingers rubbed against the 500 yen coin that Nino had given him after he'd chosen his dish. Nino looked back at him, smiling. Curry had never tasted so good.

When they were finished, they stood up and waved their goodbyes to the chef, to the restaurant. Ohno looked over to the side where once sat a tired man with an old newspaper. He was nowhere to be seen. Satisfied with the confirmation, the clear message that some things were meant to change, Ohno walked out of the restaurant, Nino in tow, and they made their way to his apartment.

They made love that night, tangled between the sheets of Ohno's bed. It wasn't just sex, a quick fuck in the bathroom between department meetings. Ohno was slow and deliberate. He put every fiber of his being into each individual caress, each brush of his hand and touch of his lips. Eventually it became heated and desperate, and his body ached in all the right places, but it was more than that. It transcended the physical.

At that moment, Ohno saw what he'd failed to see in a month's worth of looking at the stars, of living in the crossfire between his body and his mind. There on his bed, with Nino under him, he understood. The emotional and physical were never meant to occupy separate parts of his being, not now, not with this man. It was simple: Ohno's heart and mind, body and soul, his everything... it was all for Nino.

It had never been "just sex". It couldn't have been, since his heart had always been a part of it. They'd been making love all along.

  
After they caught their breath, Ohno dragged them out of bed and into the bathroom. There was one more thing he wanted to do that night, and he couldn't think of a more appropriate place. He stepped into the shower and pulled Nino in with him. He placed a kiss against Nino's shoulder, far from perfect but easing its way into recovery, and wondered briefly if someday there'd be a scar. Reaching around the other man, he turned on the faucet.

Under the spray of the water, ice cold before it transitioned into a more comfortable heat, Ohno tried it, tried to see if he could speak with his eyes the way Nino did. _Sing for me._ And Nino did.

It was a sad song, with words full of pain and longing. They weren't Japanese, or English, or any other language he knew of, but they felt just right. Ohno lost himself in the melody, in that voice. He didn't want the song to end.

  
He put Nino in his favorite set of pajamas. They were a gift from his mother on his 20th birthday, plush and blue and unworn for six years. They were probably worth more than 500 yen, but he didn't mind. He wanted Nino to have them.

They laid in bed, holding hands, staring at the ceiling. There weren't any cracks to look at, but they stayed there and watched it for a long time, as if they'd be able to find in the blank white expanse a better answer than the one they'd come to in their heads.

Finally, finally, with one last squeeze of his fingers, Ohno let go. He rolled onto his hands and knees over Nino's body and reached for his gun on the nightstand.

Ohno looked down to see if he could find words in Nino's eyes, wanting to know if what they'd say at the end was anything like what they'd said at the beginning -- _See you tomorrow._ \-- but he only found tears. He was surprised to see them there. He wanted to spend the rest of his life being surprised by this man.

Ohno nodded and closed his eyes, and with the gun between them, he pulled the trigger.


	8. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

A soft nudge against Ohno's arm brought him back to consciousness. He felt vibrations tumble through the floor with awkward, graceless thuds. Fabric rustled and stirred next to him before it settled into what he assumed was a comfortable position.

Ohno laboriously sat up, stretching with a groan, and realized that he'd never been sore in so many places before. Rubbing at his eyes, he turned to look at Nino, who was concentrating on the electric new painting in front of them. Ohno crossed his legs under himself as Nino spoke. "This one's a little different from the rest."

Surprised that Nino's comment had been so scant, Ohno looked at the painting in question. He'd spent the last day putting his everything into it, saying all there was to say, and it seemed pretty obvious to him. But Nino wasn't an artist. Maybe he needed the explanation.

Ohno smiled resignedly, huffing out a laugh. He pointed sturdily at the dot in the middle and said, "It's you!" Nino laughed, pushing him and telling him that he was sexier than that.

It had been about six months of this. Nino would come home from his job at the conbini to find Ohno lying like an unfluffed pillow in their apartment, in front of clay figures or small doodles, or once in front of the refrigerator with its door open because the heat had been too much.

And it was true. It was too hot.

Nino had remarked once that even though the sun was the same one they'd seen every day in Tokyo, it felt a little different in Okinawa. It was the last time they'd mentioned the city by name. Tokyo was where they were born, where they'd grown up and made their most cherished memories, and where they'd witnessed the fateful meeting of two hearts in a corporate bathroom. Six months ago it was where they threw it all away and died together in Ohno's tiny apartment, never to be seen again.

Ohno regretted not being able to say anything to his family before he disappeared. They'd already had one tragic loss to deal with, and even though Ohno wasn't a fraction as valuable as his mother had been, he knew that they would miss him. Ohno's sister, at least, would lose her favorite person to bully. Ohno himself lost everything.

But sitting on the floor with Nino in their overheated apartment, he knew that that was a lie. He'd lost Tokyo, maybe, but as much as he treasured the city and the places and the people, it didn't compare to what he'd gained and would continue to have for as long as they both could manage.

He felt Nino lean into him, bumping their sides together. "Why'd you choose today to paint a new painting?"

Ohno looked at him. "It felt like a good day to do it." He didn't mention that it'd been exactly a year since they first met, but Nino's gaze overflowed with fondness, and it looked like he already knew.

Ohno leaned forward and kissed him, his hands planted innocently on the floor, his fingers just a breath away from Nino's. Of all of their physical exchanges, the kisses were his favorite. Their other activities were, of course, highly enjoyable, but it was in the kisses that he was able to find himself and understand who he was, again and again. Because of those kisses, he'd finally come to know what home was, and whom it was with. It was the first time he'd felt it in, well, seven years now, and he was bursting at the seams with happiness. He became even happier every time he remembered that he'd been able to stop counting at six, at least for one of his tallies.

Ohno pulled away, and their eyes met as they always did. Nino's were as clear and expressive as they were when they met a year ago. That night on the apartment floor they said, _I love you,_ silently and without explanation. But Ohno heard them, and he understood.

Out loud, Nino told Ohno to make him a hamburger in the morning. It was the sweetest thing Ohno had ever heard, and he knew better than to refuse.

Nino rolled forward and picked himself off the floor. Ohno soon followed with the assistance of arms that were stronger than they looked and an imploring "Up, up, up." The two men stood side by side and looked at the newest painting. And for a moment, Ohno was suspended in time, in a year of falling in love and losing his life and building a new one with Nino. But then he felt Nino's fingers pinch at the hem of his shirt, tugging him out of his past and into their future.

As they walked toward the bedroom, Ohno's eyes passed over a painting in the corner of the room.

It was the only time he'd ever cried while painting. Reds rose up from the pool at the bottom, stretching to the top and glimmering as whites and yellows filtered through. It screamed of defilement in the holiest of places, and Ohno almost felt guilty being involved. But somewhere, somewhere in the middle of the brown lines of wood and the overwhelming blue gloom, Ohno's mother was there. She wasn't happy, really, and Ohno couldn't have expected her to be. But she was free, and maybe that was enough.

He was free, too, finally.

The last thing Ohno saw before he closed the bedroom door was his final addition to the painting. It had been torn through in a single instant, the instant around which Ohno had pivoted his entire life.

There in the painting, amongst the reds and browns and blues, was a bullet hole, so perfectly off-center that it seemed as if the shooter had missed on purpose.


	9. Afterword

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Fairly inconsequential self-ramblings ahead.)

  
Nino was supposed to die.

I took one look at the prompt and said to myself, "I'll write it. Nino will die." And in my head I crafted a sad story of love and loss and guns and everything else. It didn't look that different from what actually came up. The prologue would have been the same either way -- some unspecified six months later, Ohno would be in his apartment, painting. But there wouldn't have been an epilogue.

Ultimately (though I think I'd decided somewhere in the middle of the first chapter), I couldn't kill him. I hesititated up until the very end of the last chapter, but by that point, I'd already decided on the end of the story. I owed it to... well, to Ohno and Nino, really, to tell their entire story as I saw it, and that included an epilogue that tied up what loose ends were left -- namely, the question of their life or (and) death. I struggled for a while with having the epilogue there -- it seemed so easy, so contrived, so unlike what the story seemed to say about just how shitty life can be -- but their life wasn't perfect, not really, and I was okay with that. I probably can't say that I didn't include it for the people who commented and wanted a happy ending -- and I might regret that more than anything else in the process of writing this story. But at the same time, I _can_ say that I wrote what I did for myself, and I settled on the story that I'd wanted from the beginning. I've always preferred happy endings anyway.

It feels a little strange to be writing "reflections" for something as... un-epic, un-grand as _All in a Day's Work_. It's hardly the journey of a lifetime filled with blood, sweat, and tears that I've experienced countless times as a reader. I'm just a silly girl who's bathed once too frequently in a tub of hubris, maybe, writing things down like they really matter, like people care. And honestly, I expect no one to be reading this. The lovely ladies and gentlemen who've been hoodwinked into watching this community (I'm honored and touched and a little bewildered) aren't here to read the ramblings of my digested mind at work. They're here for whatever they're here for, and I'm completely fine with that.

But for some reason, nearly two weeks after I typed out the last line of the story, I still have the urge to say something about it. I don't really know _what_ exactly I wanted to say, but for now I'll jot down a couple of thoughts:

1\. This story has been at times the easiest thing to write -- when I knew precisely what I wanted to say, how I wanted to say it -- and at other times achingly difficult. There are still passages I'm unhappy with, paragraphs on paragraphs of words that seem awkward, joints that creak and grate. Some days I sat down in my chair, light as a feather, and wrote naturally, as if it were the act of breathing itself. Some days I had to force myself to open up Notepad and pound out lines of nonsense simply because I knew there was no other way to get the words out. "I'll fix them later," I'd say, and sometimes I did find a fix. Many times I didn't.

2\. I don't want to write what people want me to write. I don't think I'd enjoy it; I don't think it'd be good. There were so many times I thought of adding some details or tweaking the story that I'd set in my head simply because people had mentioned this or that. I'm glad that I didn't, not consciously at least. The epilogue still strikes a gnarled chord in my chest, possibly _because_ it made so many people happy, but it put my own heart at ease as well. And it wasn't like it hadn't been planned since the beginning -- it was just never confirmed until the end.

3\. Key plot points that weren't in the original outline:  
\- Ohno's back story. I never really had anything planned for his back story, but I'd decided that I wanted to fill it in somewhere. I didn't realize his mom had died until I wrote it. It was a pretty awful realization.  
\- The curry restaurant near the park. It worked so wonderfully with the painting in the prologue, especially as Ohno's favorite restaurant, but I didn't know it'd actually be a part of the story.  
\- The stargazing. I was surprised to see it play such an important role in the narrative (or, well, in the storytelling in Ohno's mind), but I think all I'd really wanted was to give Ohno a minor hobby for when he wanted to think.

(Basically, I spent about half the time writing, half the time being astonished at all of the details that worked themselves into the story. There was quite a number of parts that matched up with other parts without too much work on my end. I didn't have a hard time keeping things consistent, which I suppose is a good sign. The universe kept itself consistent without my help.)

4\. I've never written "seriousfic" before. I'm generally a fairly light-hearted person with an incredibly dry sense of humor, and it took me a long time to get into the "right mood" to write this story. A couple of Ohno's goofy imaginings were there because I'm a cheeky brat and I can't keep myself out of a story. Some of them felt extremely out of place, but for some reason they seemed necessary (and appropriate in an ironic kind of way), so I left them in.

5\. The chapters weren't supposed to be released according to a schedule of any kind, but they ended up coming out around the same time each week. I'd release a chapter, respond to comments, and sit on my butt for a few days until I felt like writing again. Apparently Ohno and Nino aren't the only ones who fall into a routine.

  
... Is this all too self-congratulatory? Am I trying too hard to make something out of nothing? Should I be... simpler in my reactions? "The bathroom scenes were my favorite because I'm a pervert." Maybe I should just delete all of this and leave that one sentence. It certainly wouldn't be dishonest.

I am proud, though. This _is_ the first longer piece I've written, and I like it head and shoulders above anything I've written in the past. It's a stepping stone, maybe, to whatever it is I write in the future, whether it's something like this or the crackfest of the year. I don't know when that's happening, or what it'll be like, but this fic has shown me what I'm capable of at this point. It's been a pain at times, and the days after I finished were some of my happiest (freest, most liberated) in recent memory. But it's given me something to reflect on and something to beat, and for that I'm grateful.


End file.
